When he was a telegraph operator, his friend, Mr. Scott, urged him to buy ten shares in the Adams Express Company for six hundred dollars. As Mr. Carnegie was able to get together but five hundred dollars, Mr. Scott lent him the extra hundred, and the investment was made. Soon these shares were yielding large dividends, which Mr. Carnegie carefully saved.
Already I have told you how Mr. Woodruff, the inventor of the sleeping car, came to Mr. Carnegie to get him to try out these cars. So enthusiastic was Mr. Carnegie over the invention, that he organized the Woodruff Sleeping Car Company, and borrowed money from every possible source to finance the enterprise. Here, too, he met with a degree of success that was far beyond his fondest expectations.
Suppose we invite Mr. Carnegie to tell us about his third investment. He says: “In company with several others, I purchased the now famous Story farm, on Oil Creek, Pennsylvania, where a well had been bored and natural-oil struck the year before. This proved a very profitable investment. When I first visited this famous well, the oil was running into the creek where a few flat-bottomed scows lay filled with it, ready to be floated down the Allegheny River on an agreed upon day each 174 week, when the creek was flooded by means of a temporary dam. This was the beginning of the natural-oil business. We purchased the farm for forty thousand dollars, and so small was our faith in the ability of the earth to yield, for any considerable time, the hundred barrels per day which the property was then producing that we decided to make a pond capable of holding one hundred thousand barrels of oil, which we estimated would be worth, when the supply ceased, one million dollars.
“Unfortunately for us, the pond leaked fearfully. Evaporation also caused much loss, but we continued to run the oil in to make the loss good day by day, until several hundred thousand barrels had gone in this fashion. Our experience with the farm is worth reciting: its value rose to five million dollars, and one year it paid in cash dividends one million dollars.” Surely this was a very profitable investment.
But most of Mr. Carnegie’s money was made in the steel business, and, you ask how this was done.
Prior to 1868 the process of making iron into steel had been extremely expensive. In that year Mr. Carnegie introduced a method for making steel known as the Bessemer process. For years his mills had a monopoly of the process; and, as it reduced the cost of making steel by more than half, he made vast sums of money.
About all rich men two questions are always asked: How did they get their money, and what did they do with it?
While Mr. Carnegie may be justly criticized for some of the methods he adopted in getting his money, few can criticize the beautiful spirit that he has shown in giving it away. So liberal has he been that in a single year he gave away one hundred and twelve million dollars. Some of his more notable gifts are $22,000,000 for the Carnegie Institution in Washington, $24,000,000 for the Carnegie Institution in Pittsburg, $15,000,000 for Teachers’ Pensions, $10,000,000 for Scotch Universities, and $70,000,000 for libraries.
In the northern part of Scotland is a large and beautiful mansion known as Skibo Castle. This was Mr. Carnegie’s country estate, and here he and his wife and daughter lived in comparative quiet. In his late years, as in boyhood days, he loved to tread on the free heather of his beloved country. As the years multiplied, his sympathies gradually enlarged and his vision broadened. Though some, as they grow old, become sour and crabbed, Mr. Carnegie became increasingly optimistic and youthful in spirit, until death claimed him.